Abortion: My Most Personal Decision

COMMENTARY

May 11, 2012|Susan Campbell

I was a young, single Christian woman who taught Sunday school and knocked doors for Jesus.

And I was pregnant.

A few years earlier, I'd been told by a quack gynecologist that I would never have children. I'd mourned that loss because I thought I'd be a good mother, if given the chance. And here it was, the chance.

He was in my church youth group, a sometime-boyfriend. We both knew better than to start a sexual relationship when neither was prepared mentally or physically. We also knew better than to have unprotected sex, but I was afraid to go to a drug store for fear I'd run into someone I knew.

When I told him, he said we should get married, adding: "But we both know what kind of marriage it would be." I had no intention of marrying him, and as much as I wanted to, I was no more equipped to be a mother then than I was to sprout wings. I'd watched my own mother struggle in the role and didn't want to repeat the pattern. I declined his tepid proposal — if you could call it that —- and called an abortion clinic 70 miles away. I drove myself, and lied to the people there and told them my ride was waiting just outside so they'd let me leave unescorted.

There was no counseling session, and no waiting period. The nurse pointed me to a changing room, and during the procedure, the doctor explained everything that was happening while the nurse — to distract me, I imagine — chatted about an opal ring I wore. The procedure didn't last long — 10 minutes? 20? — and after resting on a cot, I drove back home determined to dump the sometime-boyfriend, and start taking my life seriously.

Abortions were safe and legal in those days, with no more restrictions than any other medical procedure. I have never made a study of this, but I believe I am not the only woman who is who she is because she was able to make critical decisions about her body — including when she would become a mother.

I wonder what would happen now. That Missouri clinic closed in 2005 when the state legislature imposed a rule that said such facilities could only be staffed by doctors with privileges at a hospital no more than 30 miles away. In Utah, legislators just passed a bill that requires a woman to wait 72 hours — three days — before she gets an abortion. That is precisely three days longer than that state's waiting period for the purchase of a firearm.

Connecticut has no such law because, in Connecticut, we believe women are capable of making decisions about their own bodies. But the fight is never really over.

In the waning hours of last week's state legislative session, there rose an amendment that would have required parental notification for young women age 17 and under. It didn't make it. In the past, there also have been attempts at requiring women to view ultrasounds of their pregnancies prior to an abortion. Those didn't make it, either.

Last week, Westport-based Save the Children released its annual State of the World's Mothers that looks at health, education and economic conditions for women and children in 165 countries.Norway'sthe best.Niger'sthe worst. The United States ranked No. 25, in no small part because of the less-than-stellar maternity leave laws and the less-than-supportive environment for working women who want to breast-feed. We can argue whether life begins at conception, but we don't even agree that life begins at birth.

There is no tougher job in the world than being a parent, and we need people who are prepared for the job. And if they are not, we must be willing to make available safe and affordable birth control, and, when needed, medically safe abortions with as few obstacles as possible.

A few years after my drive to the clinic, I was married and heavy with a planned and prayed-for pregnancy. And then the doctor handed me my son, and I began crying. Now, I could be a mother. Now, I could give it my all. And so I did.